No kindle comes with a backlight that I know of. Last summer I spent several hours every night for two weeks reading my kindle with a flashlight in one hand

These days Amazon sells a hard cover for kindle with a light built in (it sort of folds out of the cover), or you can buy a clip-on light. I got the latter, and was surprised to see that the included batteries lasted me a whole week for 2-3 hours every night, and at the end of the week were still not depleted. The light you get from a clip-on isn't distributed equally over the reading area, but I have no major complaints.

The biggest problem that I see with all of the new Kindles is that they are locked in to the Silk browser, which means that Amazon will be scanning ALL of a user's web browsing, not just purchases at Amazon, for data mining purposes.

At the same time, Amazon is hobbling the browser in the new 3G Kindles Touch: now you can only use it for browsing the Amazon store and Wikipedia. Not that the browser for useful for much of anything else, but now it's officially locked out of the rest of the web in 3G mode.

One way of looking at it is Amazon won't have that much browsing data to snag - here's a case where two wrongs make a right

Kindle Fire has a radical new web browser called Amazon Silk. When you use Silk – without thinking about it or doing anything explicit – you’re calling on the raw computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate your web browsing.

That's ugly! I'm pretty sure it has to be in breach of some EU privacy law or other. Then again, who's going to bet that Apple doesn't already know all your iPad's browsing history? The only rule today is, don't get caught.

I find it funny all this outrage at U. S. companies doing this (not saying it's not wrong, just read on). Meanwhile it happens to U. S. companies and people just as frequently, if not moreso. The key here is the U. S. computer market provides much of the innovation and many of the largest companies are here. However, in the electronic entertainment industry (consoles, TV's, Stereo's, etc.), Japan is probably the single biggest player with the likes of Sony, Onkyo, et. al. These are all almost double the price in the U. S. over Europe despite the VAT taxes etc. Note, that is EUROPE, not Japan! Likewise, East Asian auto manufacturers trounce American auto manufacturers because they can produce them so much cheaper (for a ton of reasons). Do they lower the prices in the U. S. because of this? Well, yes, to just below their American competition. They don't price it based on a percentage profit, they price it based on what they can get in that area. I understand the outrage, but lets direct it all all industries and countries practicing this, not just the U. S. computer industry.

Here are two 46" LED TVs from the KDL-HX72... range which as far as I can tell are as near equivalent products as possible (it isn't possble to compare identical models because the US and Europe have different TV standards):

US: KDL-46HX729 Sony web price: $1500 (currently reduced from $1900) presumably + sales tax (California ifs the highest sales tax at 8.25% so that bumps the price to a maximum of $2057 - assuming the full list price, not the current discount).

This makes the UK model 29% more expensive than the US model at its most expensive.

I tried a more real world test on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk but they didn't equivalent items in stock (except via Marketplace sellers).

Interestingly amazon.com did have other Sony TVs in stock but will not display the US prices because I am in the UK (it specifically says they sell it but hide the price - this is the first time I have come across Amazon doing this).

Last summer I spent several hours every night for two weeks reading my kindle with a flashlight in one hand

I know - I was trolling the previous poster to see if he was for real, I see that post has been deleted now.

The iPad is not the perfect reading solution I thought it would be. It's too damn heavy, I was actually happier reading on my Nokia 6600 (total workhorse, still around as a backup phone). I find the Kindle attractive because of its weight... don't like the idea of a battery case though. Guess the next phone purchase should do the trick.

Someone pointed out to me that the UK version included taxes and Amazon US ads taxes at checkout - but even so the state with the highest sales tax is California at 8.25% so even at the most expensive in the US it costs $118, still $21 cheaper than the UK market (and over $100 cheaper than SA).

That was the point of my previous post - the UK VAT is included BUT even taking that into account AND adding Californian Sales Tax (which is near double most states, and quite a few are zero rated) the UK version is still $21 more than the US version.

I don't see how shipping or import/export duty would have much bearing - the devices are probably all made in the far east and shipped directly to the sales area. Even if it was shipped to the UK from the US the sort of bulk Amazon ship and the margins that they can acheive with shippers would not amount to $21 per unit. Plus if they are exporting product they will be able to recoup the import duties.

I don't understand where you get a $21 difference. Take the VAT off the £89 and you get £74 which works out at about $115. $6 difference only. All figures approx. I've no idea whether there are differences in the import/excise duties into the US & Europe, but that price difference is so much smaller than we usually see and disappears if the £ goes down to $1.48.

At the same time, Amazon is hobbling the browser in the new 3G Kindles Touch: now you can only use it for browsing the Amazon store and Wikipedia. Not that the browser for useful for much of anything else, but now it's officially locked out of the rest of the web in 3G mode.